


Not weird at all

by iriswesttt



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-06-09 16:58:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6915550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iriswesttt/pseuds/iriswesttt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Westallen friends-with-benefits high school AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Iris didn’t even wanted to play this stupid game in the first place.

The truth is, she hates spin the bottle, she always feels like she’s gonna throw up because of it, but Paul, the boyfriend, insisted and Hannah pointed out that most people playing were couples so that wasn’t an excuse, and now, after seeing Hannah kiss Becky, Becky kiss Logan, Logan kiss Ellie and Ellie kiss Barry she about had it with it. 

She was contemplating saying it was curfew time for them (Barry wouldn’t mind, he didn’t even wanted to come to this stupid party in the first place, and no one would question anything cause her dad was famous among their friends for being so strict), when the bottle stops pointing at her. 

A silence settles on the circle and all that is left is the music no one was even able to listen to two seconds ago and Iris senses everybody staring at her. Suddenly there’s something buzzing inside her ears and her lungs so she can barely hear Dave laughing and saying; 

“Oh, 20 bucks she’s not gonna do it.”

Barry was sitting on her right. She can feel him fidgeting by her side but she couldn’t make herself turn to face him. 

Iris figures Gracie is the one who lets out a long whistle and Paul, on her left, says; 

“Come on, Iris, it’s just a kiss.” 

She pulls Barry a little out of the circle and Logan complains;

“That’s not how it’s done, West, everyone has to see it.”

But she ignores it. Stupid boys, stupid game, stupid party.

“Look, Barry, I can just say that we have to go or something”, she whispers to him and he answers her on the same tone;

“Yeah, like that’s not gonna be totally obvious or anything.” 

And he’s right, it would be ridiculous, so she forces herself to look into his eyes. Barry is flushed, red all over the sides of his neck and cheeks but he holds her gaze with a disconcerting intensity. 

She would just have to do this. 

It was better than having to kiss her almost-ex Dave or Becky Cooper: now that would’ve turned her stomach. 

Besides, Barry always smells nice and now is not an exception. He smells like home and fresh laundry and the perfume she gave him last Christmas. He smells like Barry; the way he always smells even when he is not wearing the perfume, the way his pillow smells or the way he leaves hers smelling after accidentally falling asleep on her bed. 

And now, all the sudden Iris is noticing Barry has nice lips. She had never actively studied Barry’s lips before but the prospect of kissing him is forcing her to, really, it’s not her fault.

The top lip is kind of thin, but they are really pink, they are usually really pink, especially when he’s just eaten or when he’s cold, and they look soft. They aren’t chapped either, so him stealing all of her chapsticks would finally pay. 

Iris closes her eyes trying to focus on something other than Barry’s lips and takes a deep breath. Barry moves closer to her so he can whisper in her ear; 

“Look, if you don’t wanna do this then we don’t have to, I don’t mind, I can be the one to chicken out of it too.” 

His warm breath behind her ear sends a shiver down her spine and all the hair in her body suddenly prickles on her skin.

And Logan complains again;

“Come on, you took your time, guys, just kiss already!”

“Shut up, Logan”, she shouts back at him enjoying the way Logan’s face freezes in shock: the upside of being nice and putting up with people’s shit is that whenever she looses it everyone knows to take her seriously. Iris turns back to Barry and now it’s a matter of pride, for both of them, she’s not gonna let him chicken out either; 

“No, let’s do it.”

She scooches closer to him, siting on her knees and Barry brushes her hair behind her right ear, like she’s always doing herself, and it’s just so impossibly sweet. 

When their noses are touching already Barry comes to a sudden stop and says; 

“Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten those peanuts, I feel like they are lingering.” 

So Iris backs a little and giggles which makes him open a bright smile. 

He has such a pretty smile, specially when there is this softness to it that reaches his eyes. And then she actually wants to kiss him. 

The last thing she hears before her lips touch his, besides her own loud heartbeat, is Paul saying;

“Come on, it’s just a kiss, just do it.”

So she does it. Iris captures Barry’s top lip between hers, but then it seems like maybe it’s her bottom lip that is captured between his, and he brings his hand to the nape of her neck and then traces her jaw line and without realising it Iris opens her lips to him and darts her tongue into Barry’s mouth. It’s just the tip, and it’s slow because if they move too much the world would get out of its axis, she’s sure of it by now, and when her tongue touches his tongue it feels like cotton candy dissolving inside her mouth. Kissing had always been fun but it had never felt like that, like every nerve of her body was suddenly aware of everything.

Except she learns a few seconds later that it’s not really that aware of everything, because only when Becky Cooper says; 

“Yeah, ok, that’s enough.” 

Is that Iris actually remembers that there’s people around them, and that a game of spin the bottle is the reason they are doing this in the first place.

Becky stands up briskly and Iris notices she has tears in her eyes. She looks at Iris with an increased disdain, like she would like nothing more than spit on her, and says;

“I’m done!”, leaving the room. 

Barry fumbles to get up and stumbles on his feet and bumps on the door but finally manages to go after her after sending Iris an  _I’m sorry_  look as he goes.

The room is in complete silence: somewhere between the moment they started kissing and the moment they finished the playlist on Chris’ laptop had stopped and no one dares to say anything or do anything, so Iris takes a deep breath contemplating how bad it must have looked when Paul says;

“Certainly took your time.”

She rolls her eyes: hypocrisy at its finest. 

“You know what, Paul? I wasn’t the one who wanted to play this stupid game in the first place. You said it’s just a kiss, you said it twice! So you know what? Grow up, it was just a kiss. I’m done too.”

Iris passes Becky screaming at Barry at the porch of Chris’ house on her way out but neither of them seem to notice her so she goes wait for Barry in the car. 

There are tears streaming down her face. She doesn’t even understand why she’s crying. It makes no sense. She doesn’t really has the time to wonder too much about that either cause then Paul is tapping on her window. 

Iris wipes her tears hoping he has the dignity to pretend he hasn’t seen them, rolls the window down, and waits.

“I’m sorry.”

His apology shocks her enough to make her look at him.

“You are?”

He lowers down so he can be levelled to her window. His hair looks good tonight and she should have complimented him on the deep-red t-shirt that she knows he wore because last week she told him she liked the colour on guys, but it’s too late now.

“You are right”, he tells her; “it was nothing, and you didn’t wanna play and I did said it was just a kiss so I have no right to act like you cheated on me or something.”

“You don’t”, she agrees, even though that’s not what it feels like, it doesn’t feel like nothing, it feels like she kissed Barry, her Barry, and it was just…

“Was it good?”, Paul asks her and Iris wants to kick him!

“PAUL!!”, she says instead.

“What? I’m just asking…”

“I wanna kill the stupid asshole who said  _let’s play spin the bottle_ ”, she says, more to herself than to her boyfriend, who seems more emotionally stable than Iris is feeling right now. 

“Logan”, he says.

Iris looks around searching for Logan and when she doesn’t see him she asks;

“What?”

“Logan was the one who — never mind —  it’s just”, Paul takes a deep breath and Iris can’t deal with him right now, she wants the world to disappear, it’s already messy enough on the inside of her, but Paul continues; “we’re together, and I think we should be honest with each other. It looked like you liked it, so I’m just asking, no judging: did you?”

“What do you want me to say? Do you want me to lie, or you want me to hurt you?”

He didn’t look like he was going to let it go though and Iris hates him for making her examine it, for making her say those things out loud, but she does nonetheless; 

“It was good, if people didn’t like kissing they wouldn’t have invented this game in the first place.”

“Iris”, he sighs and she can’t deal.

“Look, I just wanna go home.”

“Ok”, Paul nods; “do you want me to drive Allen? So you can go?”

And the idea is completely preposterous to Iris; like she would let Paul drive Barry home after a fight with  _Beee-cky Coooper_. He didn’t even like Barry.

“No, I want to wait for Becky Cooper to finish fighting at Barry then I wanna go home. I’m not gonna let you drive him. This is not his fault.”

“I know”, Paul exclaims defensively, and then he tries again; “I know. Are we ok?”

“Yeah, we’re ok. I just don’t wanna talk about it. Ever.”

Paul never has the time to say anything back cause then Barry is opening the door to the passenger seat and Paul stands up as Iris says 

“Barr —”

He doesn’t turn to face her, focusing straight ahead instead, but Iris can see his nose is pink from crying and his voice sound constrict as he asks;

“Can we please go?”

“Yeah”, she nods.

“I’ll call you”, Paul tells her and she can’t figure out a way of asking him not to without sounding like a complete asshole so she says;

“Ok.”

Paul is several feet away from the car when he turns back and says;

“Bye, Allen.”

Barry doesn’t respond to it, and he’s still refusing to look at her, so Iris asks;

“Barry, what happened?”

“We broke up.”

“Oh, god!”, and it’s her fault, she shouldn’t have kissed him. They shouldn’t have come to this party, Barry didn’t want to come to this party, so she tells him; “I’m so sorry!”

Barry is a cryer, and Iris kind of admires that in him. She’s always afraid to show her weakness, even with Barry, but he isn’t, so the tears falling down his cheeks aren’t really a surprise for her. The pain she feels on seeing them is unexpected though. Especially because, truth be told, she’s been praying on the end of that relationship since it started, but never at the cost of Barry’s happiness.

“Barr”, it comes out more as a whine than she intends but she doesn’t really care, when he’s not fine not much else matters; “come here.”

It’s a weird hug, each of them in a different seats, and not enough space there in their car, but she places her nose in the crook of his neck and all of the sudden she gets the same feeling she did right before the kiss. So Iris presses her lips on his neck, just barely, just to feel his warm skin against her lips, and then she snaps out of it.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Even though you hate Becky?”

“I don’t hate Becky.”

“Please!”, he says, and then his voice goes into the high pitch he uses whenever he’s mimicking her and says; “ _Be-ckyy Coooo-pper_?”, like that is self explanatory, like it is proof somehow.

If she’s being honest she does hate Becky. She can’t explain why exactly but she’s not good enough for Barry, and she’s not good for him. But it just makes her heart ache, that he could think that she would want to ever see him in pain.

“I want you to be happy.”

He finally faces her, looking her in the eyes and says;

“I know.”

And his voice is… Iris can’t describe it, it just doesn’t sound like Barry, at the same time that it does sound like Barry somehow.

“Good”, she tells him, trying to think of something else to say; “Do you wanna get ice cream before we go home?”

He shakes his head;

“No.”

“No?”

“I just wanna go home.”

“Ok. Let’s go home.”

* * *

Barry diverges his eyes from the television to see Iris opening the front door, her hair in piggy tail braids and her stomach expose by the fact that she’s wearing her usual boxing apparel: a tight top and cropped t-shirt that more often than not allowed peeks of the aforementioned top, really short shorts and her extremely expensive boxing shoes that has caused some fights with Joe until he cave in and got her the ones she wanted (she swore it was for performance but Barry knew better, Iris loves boots and boot-like shoes). 

Barry’s mind goes into a curt-circuit with the vision so it takes him an embarrassing amount of time to realise it’s weird she’s there so early cause she told him she was meeting Paul after her training, and Barry finally asks; 

“What are you doing home?”

“I live here”, she informs him, dropping her bag on the floor, by the door, and squirming out of the shoes before jumping on the sofa besides him.

“I thought you were meeting Paul, why aren’t you making out right now?”, and Barry wants to kick himself.  _Shut up_ , his brain is screaming at him,  _why do you have to ruin it? Just enjoy it for as long as it takes for her to put a sweater over her outfit!_

And it doesn’t take long, before he can process anything else Iris grabs the sweater Barry left on the couch the night before and slides into it. He can’t understand her obsession with this sweater; it’s a plain hooded zipper grey sweater, but whenever he looks for it chances are Iris has sneaked it to her closet.

“That was the plan”, she tells him and his stomach drops about two feet, something acid burning his throat,  _you’ve asked for it, you fool_ , and she continues; 

“I was going to surprise him after my training but I found him making out with Gracie by the bleachers instead.”

“What?”

“Yep.”

She jumps off the couch and heads to the kitchen. Barry doesn’t know what surprises him the most: that that asshole would have the guts to do something like that or that Iris doesn’t seem much bothered by the fact, so he confirms;

“He was cheating on you?”

“Yep.”

And she pops the “P” again, while studying the fridge before deciding to go for the orange juice. Barry waits until she turns to face him to say;

“I’m so sorry.”

Because sometimes Iris likes to hide what she’s feeling, and even though Barry might think she’s not that affected by it she has to be, in some level at least, so he waits and when she doesn’t say anything, focused on choosing what cookie she wants from what’s left from the batch they baked the day before, he asks;

“How are you?”

“As it turns out, I don’t like him as much as I thought I did. I mean, I don’t even feel jealous. It just surprised me. All I feel is like a fool.”

She turns and head to the living room again and Barry follows her saying;

“Well, that’s good. The not liking him part, not the fool part, or the, you know, cheating part.”

She sinks on the couch and Barry stands in front of her, watching her, trying to figure this… her… out and then Iris drops;  _I was gonna have sex with him,_ onto him.

“What?”

And he has to sit down cause the sinking feeling he’s getting as his inside twist, making him nauseated, is too much to take standing up. Luckily Iris doesn’t seem to think there’s anything too weird about his reaction, she just says, in a defensive tone; 

“Hey, don’t judge!”

“I’m —” he’s about to tell her he’s not judging but it would probably be a lie so instead he asks; “why? Why would you do that?”

Iris doesn’t face him, suddenly extremely concentrated on the cartoon he was watching before she came in and explains;

“I don’t know. He was my boyfriend.”

“For like 6 weeks.”

Hell Barry was with Becky way longer and he wasn’t considering having sex with her, though if he was being completely honest the reason for that was that he was in love with… well, Iris.

“He still thinks he is.”

He knows she’s diverging with it, but Barry tries to convince himself that it doesn’t matter what she had planned on doing with _Paul_ , they weren’t together anymore, so he asks;

“You didn’t break up with him?”

“No, I just left. They never saw me. She looked really into it. I was never that into it.”

“Then why would you wanna have sex with him?”, he wasn’t planning on asking that, he doesn’t want the answer for that, but the question is out of his lips before he has time to stop it.

“I don’t know”, she says, still facing the TV even though Barry knows plenty well she’s not watching it. But then she turns, searching his eyes, and all the blood in Barry’s body rushes to his face as she asks; “Aren’t you curious?”

“About sex?”, he asks to buy some reaction time. Sure, he’s curious, but he’s mostly curious about what Iris would feel like, sex in general comes after that, and all the times he contemplated taking Becky’s t-shirt off felt like a betrayal to both of them and before Becky there wasn’t really any other girl.

“Yeah,” she says and Barry tries a steading breath. This is a conversation they are actually having, and then she continues; “I mean. I know what it feels like to…, you know…”

And then he is lost. What does she know? She just said she was curious, she hadn’t actually had sex before, had she? And then he remembers Dave, but no, Iris kissed Dave a couple of times, she wouldn’t have, would she?

“To what?”, he questions. And he doesn’t want to know, not really, he doesn’t want to picture anyone’s hands travelling through her body, kissing her and — the nausea has a chance to come back full force before Iris says;

“You know… by myself”

And then there’s this relief washing over him, but it’s a dangerous one cause the images his brain conjures to her phrase are about to betray him. His hands jump to his face, in hope to conceal… whatever it is that he’s feeling and he mumbles;

“Oh, god! Oh, god!”

Cause he so doesn’t want to be having this conversation, he so doesn’t want to wonder what Iris looks like while doing  _that_ , but it’s all he can think about in all this different scenarios and there’s a shiver spreading through his body as she says indignantly;

“Do not picture me!”

“When you say don’t think about an elephant people think about an elephant”, and his voice is loud and high pitched.

Iris rolls her eyes at him and says;

“Whatever, I know what you look like doing it and I don’t need my imagination.”

And why would she bring that up? Iris walking in on him about three years ago is easily one of the most humiliating memories of his life, it had the power to damp his moods and ruin his day wherever and whenever, specially because it was just his luck that  _she_  had been the one he was thinking of right when she opened the bathroom door that he could have sworn was locked.

“It took me three years to successfully block that memory, why would you bring that up now?”

She holds in her laugh, pressing her lips together. They had never talked about it, he always believed there was some code of honour that would stop her to ever thinking about it, but apparently there wasn’t.

“Everyone does that”, she says; “what I’m saying is, I know what it feels like to… finish…, but I wanted to know how it is… different, when there’s someone else there, with you. I mean, aren’t you curious?”

It’s the second time she asks him that so he figures he might as well answer her;

“Yeah, sure…”

But apparently there’s something not quiet convincing in his answer cause Iris’ face turns into a quizzical one, and then a disgusted one as she asks;

“Oh, god, did you have sex with Becky?”

“No! What? No! I didn’t! All I mean is I’m curious, but not enough to just — I don’t know, do it with a person I don’t really like.”

“I guess”, she says and there’s a hint of sadness in her eyes now and even though he’s glad that all of that happened before she slept with Paul, Barry wishes it hadn’t happened at all. He hates Paul for hurting her.

“He’s a jerk, Iris. You are so much better off”, he says, reaching for her hand, trying to comfort her somehow.

“I guess.”

“You are.”

* * *

There’s a warmth spreading through her body as Barry’s feet push hers. They are each on one side of the couch, silently fighting for the space in the middle for the last 15 minutes and Barry isn’t looking at her, he’s focused on the TV: they are watching a boring zombie movie and over the last couple weeks Iris has discovered that watching him is way more entertaining than watching whatever film he has picked.

“You are tiny”, he points out; “It makes sense I take more of the couch”, and he’s still not facing her.

“No it doesn’t”, she argues; “Just stick with your side, I’m not the one to blame if you are built like a beanpole.”

The door opens before Iris has time to contemplate the meaning of the look Barry throws her way, and it’s her dad. It’s the fourth weekend in a row he has to work and in times like this she’s secretly and selfishly glad she has Barry, that he lives with her, that he wants nothing more than spending the Saturday afternoon on sofa with her, that he isn’t dating Becky-Cooper-the-nightmare anymore.

“Hey, what are you two doing home?”, her dad asks them.

“I’m always home on Saturday afternoons”, Barry informs him.

“So am I”, Iris agrees.

Joe takes off his shoes and hang his coat on the hanger before turning to face them with a suspicious look on his face.

“No movies or bowling?”, he asks them; “No Becky or Paul?”

Iris thought that maybe Barry would have told her dad but she knew better than to say anything boy-related to him, he would never approve of them, he didn’t approve of Paul and the second she would tell him that he had cheated on her she would get a big fat and resonating  _I told you so._

“Becky dumped me like three weeks ago”, Barry says, his focus back on the movie.

“What?”

“And we’re watching a movie”, he points out, even though he knows as well as Iris that that wasn’t what Joe had meant.

“Old movie”, Iris says, praying they don’t reach the Paul portion of the question.

“A classic”, Barry argues.

“There’s no such thing as classic zombie movies.”

But Joe interrupts their discussion by saying it’s not necessary for them replicate whatever argument about the movie they were having just so he can witness it and Barry turns to look at her with a grin on his lips and there is that swooping sensation on her belly again so Iris smiles back.

Joe pauses the movie, causing them to turn to face him;

“I have to go to Starling City for the weekend.”

“What?” 

“Why?”, as Iris utters the word she feels a little guilt at the expression on her dad’s face. She knows he doesn’t like leaving them alone, she knows if he could he wouldn’t work on weekends and Christmas and Easter but it doesn’t change the fact that he does. It doesn’t change the fact that sometimes she just wants her dad there, so he can cook for them and complain about the fact that they are up talking too late.

“Case”, he explains; “I’ll be back Tuesday morning, and someone from CCPD will pick me up, but my train leaves at 7 tonight and I would rather you two drove me.”

“Yeah, ok”, Barry says and Joe proceeds to explain that he’ll leave them money and that will be no parties while he’s gone and that will be no boyfriends on his home either and Iris decides to break it to him;

“Don’t worry, Paul and I broke up.”

She doesn’t understand why her dad is suddenly looking at Barry like he would be able to explain this to him instead of Iris herself, and then he asks;

“What? Is it something in the water?”

And Iris ignores it. She has no wish to ever discuss Paul with her dad or with Barry, or with anyone for that matter, ever again, so she says instead;

“I’m gonna go make popcorn. This is too boring without having anything to distract me from it.”

She already has the popcorn poping when her dad follows her into the kitchen and starts, with his concerned-dad-voice on;  

“Iris, sweetheart —”

“I’m fine, dad”, she informs him before he has time to ask anything.

“You are?”

“Yeah”, she confirms, and really she is, she just doesn’t want to think about the whole debacle anymore, doesn’t want to remember about how Paul basically accused her of not liking him as much as he liked her, how he said that Barry had been between them since the beginning, or how he said everyone noticed they liked each other after that kiss.

“So should I assume that the timing of the break up is a coincidence, or…”

And she didn’t want anyone else accusing her of having feelings for Barry, specially not her dad so she plays dumb; 

“Or what?”

“Or you and Barry …”

“Barry and I what?”

Her dad watches her for a while as she carefully tries the sugar she’s melting for the caramelised popcorn and she can pinpoint the exact moment he gives up on it; 

“Never mind. I’ll go pack.”

When she’s done with the popcorn, both the salty one and the caramelised one and she’s heading back to the living room she comes to an abrupt stop as she hears Barry saying;

“… Becky had another fist and I had it with it.”

She probably shouldn’t eavesdrop on their conversation but she can’t help, she stills by the door as her dad questions Barry;

“I thought she dumped you.”

“She did. It was mutual.”

“It’s never mutual”, and when Barry doesn’t answer he tries; “Barry?”

Iris hears Barry inhaling deeply before saying

“Well, if you have to know, but I haven’t told Iris that, so please, don’t, she’ll feel guilty or whatever”, and Iris stomach drops praying he stops talking at the same time that the anticipation of what he’s about to say makes her restless with curiosity and this overwhelming need to know what it is that he can’t tell  _her,_  his best friend, but it’s ok to tell her dad.

“Becky asked me to choose between her and Iris”, Barry explains, and of course she did. The jerk!

“And you chose Iris.”

“She’s my best friend”, Barry says simply and Iris isn’t sure how she feels about his justification but doesn’t want to listen anymore, it’s difficult enough having all these people questioning her feelings for Barry without having to hear them questioning Barry’s feelings for her, so she makes a noise and announces;

“Ok, there’s caramelised and there’s salty, now you can’t have any unless you surrender the couch!”

And Barry smiles at her, the smile that makes his eyes shine and she feels incredibly similar to melting sugar somehow. 

* * *

 

“Hey.”

Barry looks up from his book to see Iris, neatly standing in the doorframe of his bedroom, her feet pressed together, her right hand holding her left fist and her formal attitude is throwing him off. They were weird for a bit after the  _conversation_  but this is a whole other lever of stiffness and he can’t interpret it, they had spend the whole day together, she had even dragged him to boxing training and they had just drove Joe to the station, Barry was completely failing to grasp what could have change between their diner and now. 

“Hi”, he says tentatively and then she asks;

“Can I come in?”

Which makes everything even more weird, she never really asks to come in, specially not when he has his bedroom door open and is so clearly just reading in bed so he questions her, sitting up;

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing”, she says, stepping into his room a foot at a time until she’s standing in front of him.

“You never ask before you barge in”, he explains as she sits by his side.

“I was thinking…”, she says. 

“Oh-oh.”

“No oh-oh. I was just thinking…”

And her nervousness is making him nervous, anxious even. He wonders for a bit if she heard what he said to Joe about Becky, if she is going to tell him that he should give it a shot with Becky and that she won’t stand in the way. He might die if she does, if he has to explain to her that he doesn’t want Becky or any other girl. Not more than he wants her, never more than Iris, just her, in any way shape and form that she’ll have him. 

“Ok?”, he asks.

“You’re single”, she says, and there’s a hint of questioning in her affirmation so her confirms it;

“Yeah.”

“And I’m single too”, she says and there’s a part of his brain telling him that he’s not imagining that she has been staring way more at him the last couple weeks, that he’s not imagining the way that her touch seems just a little different, that she seems shier around him somehow but he can’t believe in it, cause he can’t take it if it’s not true.

“O-kay?”

“I think we should…”

“Should what?”

Iris takes a deep breath and looks him in the eyes and finally says, with a blush spreading on her cheeks;

“I think we should have sex.”

His heart pounds on his chest and he’s pretty sure that’s faster than humanly possible so he might be having a heart attack, and that is highlighted by the fact that all the air leaves his lungs in one go and he’s sure he heard it wrong, she wouldn’t… she didn’t…

“What?”, he asks.

“Don’t freak out, ok?”, she pleads, like freaking out wouldn’t be her own default reaction if he was the one proposing her something like this

“Iris —”

“Look, you said you were curious —”

“Yeah, but —”

“And I’m curious —”

“Iris —”

And he doesn’t know why all the sudden he’s so against it, like that isn’t exactly what he had been waiting for his whole life, for her to feel the same, for him to have this without having to be the one risking their friendship, except it’s still at risk, except she’s not exactly asking him to be her boyfriend, she’s asking if he would have sex with her.

“Just let me finish, ok?”

And god, she’s so pretty. And he’s going to say yes, even if his brain is screaming at him he would never deny her anything, specially not this, but he agrees to let her finish with a weak  _ok._

“You were right”, she tells him; “I don’t wanna have sex with someone I don’t even like. That’s not how I want my first time to be, cause that would be scary and uncomfortable, but I don’t wanna wait for some fairytale idea of a first time that’s not gonna happen either.”

He’s surprised of how much it hurts to have her telling him that he’s basically not her prince charming even though he obviously knew it already, but then she continues;

“You are my best friend and I trust you. I know you are not gonna hurt me or anything and I know you won’t let me down and that’s … that’s better than some fairytale cause it’s real.”

She nods at herself and swallows dry and Barry watches her, afraid to interrupt her again.

“And I don’t know, whenever I thought about it with Paul or Dave or some other guy, it seemed scary, it doesn’t seem scary with you, cause you’ll be there.”

“Yeah, I don’t think the other guys would like me there”, he says, trying to make her comfortable, trying to steady himself, trying to grasp that he’s about to kiss Iris. Iris is asking for him to kiss her and touch her. She’s siting by his side in her doughnuts pajamas asking him to have sex with her. 

“Look, Barr, you don’t have to do this, if you don’t find me attractive or —”

“No. Iris”, he rushes to assure her; “You’re the prettiest person I’ve ever met.”

She offers him a smile and she has never given him that smile before; sweet and vulnerable and full of something he can’t quite describe but it sends this electric warmth through him and he wants her so much, but he wants for her to want him even more, he wants to be hers even more.

“You can say no”, she tells him, “and I’ll get it. It’s just ever since that day we kissed I, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, about you, and I guess I just, I don’t know, I thought I would ask.”

He smiles at her, failing completely to keep all this happiness inside him as he agrees to whatever she wants, telling her  _ok._

“And afterwards?”, he asks.

“Afterwards we’ll see if we want to keep doing — it?”, she offers, her voice soft and her smile cautious as he nods.

Then there’s this fumbling and he takes comfort that he’s not doing it alone and he tries to go for a kiss as Iris turns away and they almost knock their heads together making both of them to stand still and Iris proposes;

“How about we just kiss and then if it’s weird we’ll stop.”

“Ok”, he nods again.

Iris leans towards his way, keeping her hands in her lap, so he keeps his hands to himself as well and this time there’s no one there, this time their kiss is just theirs, it’s because she wants it, she wants him and her lips are warm and soft against his, and her peppermint chapstick makes it tingly and it matches the tingle that spreads throughout his body as he reaches for her cheeks, cradling her pretty face.

Then he can feel Iris’ hands pressed against his back, and she moves so she’s in his lap and he allows his lips to travel accordingly so he can taste her cheeks and her jaw and the crook of her neck stopping at the noise that escapes her when he bites delicately and wet there. Iris pulls away a little bit and asks; 

“Is it weird?”

Opening the most brilliant smile as he answers her;

“No, it’s not weird at all.”


	2. Chapter 2

Iris studies herself on her bedroom mirror. She knows it’s silly to expect a physical change but she examines her naked body closely all the same, and hey, the purple mark on her left boob is a physical change, not a permeant one, but a change.

She was expecting to at least feel a little different but she just feels like herself. Except for the fact that she was pretty impressed with some of the stuff Barry did to her last night, nothing felt terrifying, scaring, or even too surprising, she was most surprised that it hadn’t been weird, that _Barry_ touching her hadn’t been weird. At all.

Barry knocks on her door, well on the bathroom that connects their bedrooms door, and she’s not completely sure why she wraps her towel around herself before saying;

“Come in.”

He sneaks into her room carefully, unsurely, and Iris questions where all the stiffness is coming from. Well, she _knows_ where is coming from but it seems like it shouldn’t be, after all that’s done, multiple times, and in all these different ways, and it’s not like they could go back and unlearn what they now know about each other.   

“Hey”, he says tentatively, his voice and smile soft.

“Hi.”

Iris watches as Barry leans against the wall of her bedroom, his hands searching for the pockets on his grey sweatpants and his eyes travel on her before they seem to settle on her eyes and he states; 

“You sneaked out of bed.”

“I woke up like an hour ago. I made coffee and pancakes and took a shower”, she explains. 

She had considered waking him up when she did, but he looked so peacefully that she decided against it.

“Oh, I thought maybe…”, he starts but then seem to regret what he was about to say. 

“Maybe what?”, Iris insists.

“Maybe you sneaked out of bed because you were regretting last night.”

And there’s something comforting in his vulnerability, even though it probably shouldn’t have, so Iris tries her best smile, which is not much of a challenge seeing Barry seems to get it out of her without having to try anyway, and says; 

“No, no…”, but she doesn’t want to explain she was analysing herself. All the sudden it felt like such a childish thing to do. 

“Are you? Regretting it”, she asks, and Barry’s response is a steady and sweet _no,_ and he smiles too, the one smile that seems to make his eyes shine, the one smile that she would like to think it’s hers and no one else’s. She doesn’t want him ever giving this smile to anyone but her.

She can’t very well tell him that, and they hadn’t really talked about anything other than the necessary _there_ last night, so she says;

“How did you know how to do all that stuff?”

Barry grows pink and finds an extremely interesting spot on her floor to stare at as he answers her;

“Oh — well, I’ve — I’ve done a lot of research.”

“You’ve done research?”

He looks back at her again, finally taking a step towards her, and he’s mere inches closer now but it’s enough to send her heart on a crazy fast beat in anticipation as he argues; 

“What? I’m naturally curious and I like to be prepare.”

She takes a step towards him as well;

“You did research, what do you search exactly, _how to give girls head_?”, and she can’t help the big smile as his eyes try to escape from hers and it’s sweet and so _Barry_ that he would worry about that.

“Well, I mean, I don’t see the research doing any harm”, he defends.

And now they are close, really close, close enough to touch, but Iris wants Barry to do something first so she waits what feels like an eternity until he travels his finger pads delicately from her shoulders to her wrists, interlacing their fingers in the end of it and it sends a shiver down her spine and she smiles again.

“You knew exactly what to do too”, he tells her.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“So we keep doing it?”, she questions him.

“Unless you don’t want to.”

“I want to”, cause she does, there’s no space to doubt that part, she wants to try all they already did again and some stuff they didn’t do, and as soon as the words leave her lips Barry is kissing them, first the upper lip and then the bottom lip and then he opens his to her and it’s easy to slip in as her hands bring him down from the nape of his neck and his hands hold her by the waist, letting it go briefly so her towel drops to the ground and before they sink into her bed Barry takes off his t-shirt and she likes his skin touching her skin, she likes the smell of him and she likes his finger pads dancing on her belly, making her breath catch and then he stands up and Iris can’t understand why until he says;

“I think we shouldn’t do it in your bedroom though.”

“Why? What’s wrong with my bedroom?”, she asks in confusion. 

It was so perfect until he stopped, why would he voluntarily stop?

“I just feel like doesn’t matter who is the boy having sex with you in your bed Joe will still think that he has a moral obligation to kill him.”

She laughs at him.

“And that doesn’t apply to if we do it in your room?”

“No, not really”, he shakes his head, and then adds; “not in my mind anyway.”

But she pulls him down again and Barry doesn’t protest anymore.

* * *

 

When Joe comes home from work that day he finds Iris and Barry on the sofa, TV showing one of those sitcoms with laughter on the back ground and Iris is holding both of Barry’s wrists in her hands and saying;

“Will you stop that?”

Barry yanks his hands back and rubbing his wrists in feign pain and offence and then his fingers are on his chin while he whines;

“But it’s gross, it’s gross and disgusting.”

“And if you pick on it, it will be more gross and disgusting. And it’s gonna leave a mark”, Iris tells him and Joe figures it’s about a pimple. They had this sort of exchange before and it’s always Barry picking on a pimple.

“Barry! Stop doing that!”, she says again, slapping his hands away from his face.

Joe had been watching them closely the last three weeks or so, since he came back from Starling City really, and how the two of them seemed to have changed. 

If he was being completely honest he was ready for them to announce they were together since puberty hit, but they didn’t, and then there was Dave and after Dave there was Becky, and then there was Paul, but now there was apparently no one. 

And now Iris sat on Barry’s hands, after managing to pull his arms down to the couch while Barry uttered an indignant _hey!,_ to how she successfully manhandled him, and the fact that Barry wasn’t blushing furiously to it is what Joe needed as final proof.  

“Not everyone was blessed with good skin like you”, he watches Barry tell Iris and she rolls her eyes at it, neither of them turning to acknowledge Joe’s presence. 

“Yeah, well, that’s not a blessing”, Iris argues, letting go of him and Barry straights himself up with a _hunf,_ while Iris sits by his side, on her knees, completely focused him. One of her hands pushes the hair off his forehead while the other, on the jaw line, turns his head a bit so she can analyse his skin and Barry just takes it as she continues; 

“I take care of my skin, while you think you don’t need to moisturise.”

“My skin is oily.”

“Doesn’t mean you don’t need to moisturise it.”

“Ugh! Stop saying that word”, Barry asks, finally turning to face the TV again.

“Stop picking on your pimple then.”

And Iris is very close to Barry, she moves around the sofa until their legs are touching and she looks about to hold his hand when Joe decides to make a noise. He’s not completely sure why, maybe he’s afraid he’ll get more proof than what he bargained for, so he slams the front door close behind him. 

He half expects them to jump apart but they must think nothing of the position they are in cause neither of them moves except to turn their heads a bit to face him and tell him _hi, Joe_ and _hey, dad, what’s for diner?_

But then Barry’s hand move to his chin again and Iris grabs him by the wrist one more time and the boy complains;

“Fine, I’ll live with an alien coming out of my chin.”

“You’re so melodramatic”, Iris says; “it’s one pimple.”

“It’s gross.”

And Joe heads to the kitchen, not in the mood to hear them arguing about it any longer. On one hand he was hoping they would hold out until Barry was out of the house so he wouldn’t have to deal with the implications of having two horny teenagers living under the same roof while being together, but on the other hand at least Barry was a nice boy, Joe had made sure of it, so it was better than the knobs Iris usually picked.

Joe decides now is probably not the best time to confront them about it, maybe one at a time, while not having the other’s presence there to back them up would be the most successful tactic. 

Maybe he should start with Barry since he was the most likely to crack anyway, and the thing would have to be done in a way to not warrant suspicions that he was on to them, because if they didn’t crack but noticed where he was trying to get at they would start policing their behaviour and then it would take longer for him to be sure, and if they noticed what he meant and Joe was wrong then they would probably have a meltdown. Or at least, he knew, Barry would. 

* * *

 

When her alarm goes off that morning Iris doesn’t want to wake up. It’s too comfortable in bed, more than usual, and it’s only when she turns a little so there’s room for her to stretch and she feels Barry breathing on the nape of her neck that she realises why it’s so cosy and warm.

They had fallen asleep while talking the night before and until now they had never let that happen while her dad was home. It had been a few weeks (ok there were three weeks and four days, so what she was counting? it didn’t mean anything), but Iris wasn’t sure what this thing with Barry was herself, and the last thing she needed was to invite a third party opinion on it and be sure her dad would have an opinion, or multiple opinions. 

He would also explicitly forbid them to have sex in the house and Iris really didn’t want to have to resort to having sex in their car. The one time they had tried that Barry had been too anxious throughout the whole thing, even though it was pitch black outside and no one could have seen them, which in turn had made her anxious and the experience much less enjoyable than when they did it on her bed, or his bed, or in the shower. She also wasn’t too big on dirty public places and finding a clean bathroom was a lot of work.

“You smell good”, he breaths on her neck.

“It’s call shampoo and soap”, she tells him, turning to face him and he has the most childish smile on his lips and Iris agrees, it’s nice waking up to him.

“I wash my hair everyday and I don’t smell this good.”

“Maybe you’re doing it wrong”, she offers instead of telling him that he does smells good too, which he does.

“Maybe you just smell good”, Barry argues, and Iris places a lip seal on his lips and moves to his jaw line where she feels like she can kiss properly despite of the morning breath, and she’s just about to bite on a really good spot on his neck, one that always causes Barry to catch his breath, when there’s a knock on her door and her dad is calling her;

“Iris?”

“Yeah, dad, I’m waking up”, she lets him know.

“Do you know where Barry is?”

Iris feels Barry freezing by her side, as if by staying completely immobile Joe wouldn’t be able to tell that he was on her bed, like he has x-ray vision or movement sensors or something and can see through her door.

“No”, Iris says in what she deems an unsuspectedly neutral voice; “Why?”

“He hasn’t slept in his bed”, Joe tells her through the door.

“How can you tell?” Iris asks and Barry opens his eyes big as if telling her to cut the conversation short, but Iris thinks it would be weirder if she showed no interest.

“He’s nowhere around the house” Joe says; “and his bed is made.”

“Maybe he went for a run?”, Iris offers.

“And made his bed? Without anyone asking him to?”

“Well”, she can’t really argue with that; “I don’t know, dad.”

“Get up”, he instructs her; “I’m making pancakes.”

“Ok, I’ll be down in a minute.”

There is time for five-seconds of complete and silent panicking on Barry’s part and then his cellphone, and thank god he brought over her room last night and thank god he keeps the thing on silent all the time, is ringing and it’s her dad and Barry looks at it like it’s a bomb ready to explode.

“Answer it”, she whispers.

“And tell him what?”, Barry whispers back.

“I don’t know, that you went to school earlier”, she offers, and Barry is a terrible lier, she can feel the whole secret slipping through her fingers for depending solely on him but if he doesn’t answer it would be all the more suspicious, so she flips his phone open and puts it on speaker in the lowest volume so she can listen to her life draining away; 

“Hey, Joe”, Barry says in a cool tone he would never ever use unless he was trying to hide something.

“Where the hell are you?”

And Barry goes with Iris’ idea, telling her dad he had to go to school earlier to check on an overnight experiment he left happening on the school’s lab and how Barry pretty much can’t lie to save his life Joe obviously notices it, but lets it go after Barry promises three times he’s not.

“He knows I’m lying”, Barry sighs in defeat afterwards.

“That’s cause you’re such a terrible lier”, she tells him with a kiss on his pouty lips.

“Now I can’t even have pancakes,” he complains.

“I’ll bring my breakfast here and you can have a pancake.”

“But you’re not gonna let me drink your coffee. I need coffee too, you know. And how I’m supposed to sneak out of here?”

And then Joe is calling Iris again, telling her she’ll be late if she doesn’t get up in this instant and Iris is not functional enough to solve the _how-are-we-getting-Barry-out-of-my-room_ problem so she says nothing as Barry complains and when he shuts up she says;

“You tire me! And don’t make me difficult questions, I haven’t had my coffee yet.”

* * *

 

So as it turned out, about five hours later, Iris would gladly come up with 13 different _how-are-we-getting-Barry-out-of-my-room_ plans (unnecessary plans since her dad left earlier and they never had to sneak Barry out of the house in the first place) rather than deal with the reason why she is locked on the girls’ bathroom on the second floor of the main building, the one by the teacher’s lounge, where nobody ever went, crying her eyes out.

The reason she is crying is Barry Allen, and his stupid face, and if he hadn’t fallen asleep in her bed the night before none of this would have happened, because then she wouldn’t have had breakfast just her and her dad, and then her dad wouldn’t have asked her if Barry was lying about the school project to hide a girlfriend, and then she wouldn’t have told Barry her dad had spend breakfast questioning her about their love lives, and he wouldn’t had told her that Joe had had the same conversation with him the night before, and then Barry wouldn’t have turn to her and said;

“He knows about us.”

“What? No, he doesn’t!”, but she wasn’t truly believing it because her dad had never been that interested in their high school romances before and Barry was rambling and panicking and Iris sat on her bed trying to calm herself down so she could successfully calm Barry down;

“Ok, we need to be objective about this”, she said; “look from outside, you know, I though we were doing a good job concealing it.”

“I did too!”, and Barry’s voice reached a high pitch that had been a while since she had last witnessed, and he was pacing up and down her room in only his underwear, making her dizzy.

“Ok, what exactly did he ask you?”

“He asked me”, Barry tried but his voice died down, and then took a deep breath tried again; “he said, Iris seems to be a lot happier lately, do you know if she’s dating anyone?”

And he was lucky she couldn’t reach him because if she could she would have punched him! If he would just share basic information she would have been prepared;

“Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday? I would’ve had time to prepare!”

“I said no, ok?”, Barry assured her; “well, I said not that I know of, and then he asked about me, said I seemed happier too, like I was —”

And then he stopped himself, and he stopped pacing too and Iris should have known, she should have known something bad was coming, she should have known to not insist, but her inquisitive mind would never let that one slide, specially not after observing the blush spread through Barry’s face;

“Like you were what?”, she insisted, meeting no answer from him, so she insisted again; “like you were what, Barry? Like you were having sex?”

“No! God, no!”, he said, a repulsed look on his face, but then, all the sudden his expression went soft and he told her in a whisper; “like I am in love.”

He stood in front of her like he was bracing himself for the worse and then words left her lips without permission and Iris heard herself asking him;

“Are you?”

“Iris”, he begged and she should have complied but all she said was _don’t lie to me, you’re terrible lier_ and all the sudden he was telling her;

“Yeah, I’m in love, what did you think? That I could totally separate this? That I could kiss you all the time and touch all the time and — you’re my best friend, Iris”, and he said that last part like it was explanation and she could feel the tears fighting their way out so she blinked them away.

“So? You are mine too.”

“And you don’t love me.”

And it wasn’t a question and that somehow was what hurt the most so she went on defensive mode cause she wasn’t about to try to convince him otherwise, not when she didn’t exactly and fully knew the answer to it herself;

“That was the deal, Barry, we said we were going to have sex.”

“You said we were going to have sex”, he told her accusatorially. 

“And you agreed to it! I didn’t make you do anything, I said you could say no but you said yes”, and she couldn’t believe he would throw that in her face, she didn’t want to believe any of it was actually happening when just 30 minutes ago she had woken up warm and happy. 

“I know!”, he shouted and walked towards his room, running away from her, picking the first pieces of clothing he managed to get his hands on and getting dress to avoid looking at her, but she didn’t leave.

It was all too much like Barry to want to run away whenever something got difficult but she wouldn’t allow him to.

“Then don’t turn this into something it wasn’t!”, she said.

And he said nothing until he was completely dressed, then he quietly looked her in the eyes and calmly repeated;

“You are my best friend, Iris.”

And that was exactly what was hurting her, that he would accuse her of not being his, that he would dare to take _this_ away from her too.

“Why do you keep saying that like you’re not mine?”

“Then how do you do that?” he asked her, and he looked like he was hurting too and part of her just wanted to make it better for him, to stop him from hurting, but she never expected that Barry would cause her such pain but there he was, asking; 

“How can you — not feel it too?”

“I don’t know!”

“Yeah, ok. I’m gonna go”, he said, grabbing his bag.

“Where?”, she questioned and she didn’t mean to sound so much like a whine.

“To school.”

“You’re gonna walk?”

“Yeah”, he answered without facing her.

“Why?”

“Cause I can’t be around you right now.”

And from all the things he said or could have said that was just simply put cruel.

“Barry.”

“Sorry, I’m sorry.”

And he had walked to school and he had avoided her at lunch, vanishing, nowhere to be found, and Iris had to deal alone with all of their friends asking her where Barry was, and with their mind-blowed faces when she told them she had no idea where Barry was, and he wasn’t picking up his phone or texting her back and she couldn’t even swallow her food and her whole body hurt, like it was too much effort to just breath, which was why she’s sitting on the toilet of the second stool of the lady’s room of the second floor of the main building, the one by the teacher’s lounge, skipping the only class of the day she had with Barry Allen.


	3. Chapter 3

As Iris and Barry sat opposite at the table in complete silent, after 30 minutes of the both of them helping him with dinner in complete silence Joe about had it with their game so he asks;

“What the hell is going on with the two of you?”

“Nothing!”, they say in unison and it would never cease to impress Joe how even when fighting they somehow managed to be in sync.

“Doesn’t sound like nothing”, he says, but his input is met with silence again. 

Apparently Iris is more mad at Barry: if it were the other way around she would have somehow managed to make him laugh out of his impassiveness and they would be at least somewhat communicating since she could melt Barry Allen if that was what she wanted to. 

Joe suspects he might have been completely off in guessing they were together after all. They have always acted a little bit inappropriate and the increase of touching could have been out of his own imagination, and he can only think of one reason why Iris could possibly be this mad, so he turns to Barry and asks; 

“Are you back together with Becky Cooper?”

“What? No!”, and he can’t help but notice that Barry’s offended face is very similar to Iris’ offended face, so Joe asks his daughter;

“Is he?”

“How should I know? Apparently I’m not really his best friend.”

So they arrived at the heart of problem, that’s the reason. Best-friend-title-revoking. He witnessed some of those through the years, though they are usually made by Iris. Now it seems to be the other way around, which doesn’t sound very good.

“That’s not what I said! That’s NOT what I said!”, Barry tells her, his voice raising with each word, the phrase peaking on the  _not_ each time.  

“No, you’re just deciding that the way I’m acting is not how a real best friend would act”, Iris spits out, disdain in her voice, and Joe regrets having asked. Maybe a silent fight would have been better for his headache after all. 

“That’s not — you know what, never mind, you don’t want to understand so you won’t understand cause that wasn’t our deal, was it?”

Iris stands up suddenly and fiercely, she looks at Barry in the eyes and says;

“You don’t have to worry about being around me right now, cause I can’t stomach your face, it’s giving me indigestion”, and with that she turns around to march upstairs.

“Iris, you’ve barely eaten!”, Joe calls after her.

“I’m not hungry”, she tells him from the stairs and now it’s personal, he can’t very well have his kid skipping meals, so he turns to Barry once again, a severe expression purposely on his face and inquires;

“What did you do?”

“What!?”, Barry asks him indignantly; “why do you assume I did something?”, he asks pointing the stairs, and Iris’ behaviour, as if to tell him that she was being the irrational one.

“Because I’ve never seen her that mad. And it sounded like you’ve revoked the best friend title, that’s pretty big for the two of you.”

“I did not revoke — I’m not — she thinks that if you don’t react the exact way she expects you to react then you just — you’re violating the sacred rules of friendship or something.”

Joe tries another few guesses all met with a simple and not explained  _no_ by Barry and he’s not enjoying playing this game so he asks;

“Then what? Cause I’ve got a kid who won’t eat because your face is giving her indigestion, and that’s a big problem since you make all of your meals together.”

And he’s gotta admit, the way Iris worded it was pretty clever, so he laughs at it, which makes Barry clearly offended;

“This isn’t funny, Joe.”

Joe’s laughter dies on his lips and he says;

“Well, ok, then tell me what this is about.”

“Ask Iris. I’m going to my room.”

And instead of one Joe is left with two kids who won’t eat their dinner.

* * *

The morning after the dinner debacle Barry walks to school again, and it’s weirdly cold for a September morning, and it’s raining too and Iris can’t believe Barry would rather walk and mold under the weather than face her.

Her dad offers her a sympathetic face over breakfast, when she question him as to where is the traitor, as he informs her that Barry told him the night before he had to check on his chemistry project and Iris curses her supposedly best-friend who can’t take five minutes off his time to come up with a different excuse than the one  _she_  offered him in the first place.

So by lunch time, when she walks into the cafeteria and sees  _him_  sitting on their table (granted, he had picked a different seat than his usual one besides hers) she can’t make herself join the rest of their group and pretend like nothing is wrong.

The overwhelming smell of food  in the air turns her stomach and all the sudden the sight of the pizza she picked couldn’t possibly be less appetizing. Hannah stops on her tracks, carrying her own tray, by Iris’ side and asks;

“Ok, what did Allen do?”

“Nothing”, Iris says, but she notices how her voice betrays her, sounding on the verge of tears. She's sick and tired of being on the verge of tears all the time.

“Iris, come on, you can tell me”, Hannah assures her in a much softer voice now. 

And Iris knows she should talk to someone, knows she needs to, but the only person she has the most remote desire to discuss this with is currently sitting by Logan’s side, a smile playing on his lips, blissfully unaware he’s ripping her heart out, so she hates his guts too much at the moment to even look at his ugly face.

“We’re fighting”, she tells Hannah because simply walking away would probably make her worried.

“Why?”, she questions Iris who merely shakes her head, dumping her pizza at the closest empty table and walking away.

She doesn’t skip Bio again though. Instead she applies her pink berry lipgloss that always gets Barry pretty focused on her lips and unbuttons the top buttons of her top (and she knows her push-up bra is working cause Dave won’t stop staring at her boobs), and sits on the stool she shares with Barry cause if he wants to pretend like everything is all right when in reality there’s about 20 hours since he last spoke a word to her then two can play this game. 

But then Barry hands the teacher her homework as well as his own, without so much as taking a look at her, to make sure she’s seen it, to signal  her to abandon whatever excuse her mind was forming for not being on class yesterday, for not having her homework ready, but Iris sees it, she sees how he used a different pen and a different paper than the ones he used for his own, she can tell how he tried very hard mimicking her handwriting and she can’t figure him out and it deflates her so completely that suddenly all she wants is to cry (again).

Barry spends the whole class without so much as taking a look at her, so the boobs and the lipgloss are a complete waste, and he walks out of the classroom before she even has the time to gather her pens. 

She waits for him at their car afterwards but he never comes, he walks home again instead, he also doesn’t come out of his room for dinner, but she notices the rest of the pasta from the day before is gone so at least he’s managing to eat which is more than what she can say about herself. All she seems to manage is crying, she suspects she might dehydrate from all the tears.

On the plus side her dad apparently finally notices the gravity of the situation: he brings her mint chocolate chips ice cream (she sees the plain chocolate one for Barry in there too but doesn’t comment on it even though he probably doesn’t really deserve it) and pistachio brownies from her favourite bakery (and she gladly notices  Barry doesn’t get an extra treat). He also cooks her favourite meal and avoids asking any and all questions about her so-called best-friend. 

When she’s brushing her teeth for bed that night she hears through their bathroom door her dad telling Barry;

“I left your food in the fridge.”

“Thanks, but I’ve already eaten.”

“I bought you ice cream. Belgian chocolate.”

“Thanks, Joe, but I’m not feeling like eating anything right now.”

“Barry, listen, I don’t know what this is between the two of you and quite frankly at this point I have no desire to find out, but you fix it”, he instructs.

“Joe! Iris —”, and she wishes her dad would have let the traitor finish, she’s very curious as to how he can possibly think that the fact they aren’t speaking is her fault when he is the one who told her he _couldn’t be around her,_ but Joe cuts him off;

“I don’t care, I don’t care you think this is her fault, I’m telling you, you fix it.”

Barry doesn’t say anything afterwards, but he doesn’t fix it, he doesn’t even try talking to her, instead he walks to school again the next day and Iris suspects this stupid fight might never ever end.

* * *

Barry knows Joe is right, he shouldn’t keep running from Iris. He should probably have waited for her instead of walking earlier to school again, he should be trying to fix it but he can feel how the next thing out of her perfectly shaped lips will be that they shouldn’t do  _this_  anymore and he can’t face the fact that from now on he won’t ever have her again, so he avoids her cause it’s the only way of avoiding the end.

Except that when she forcefully opens the door to the second chemistry lab like she knows for sure Barry is hiding there during his free period he can’t really avoid her anymore.

“Can I talk to you?”, and it’s shaped like a question but he knows Iris enough to know it’s a demand.

“I’m in the middle of something”, he tells her.

“Fine, be like that, Barry. I’ll wait by the door so unless you wanna spend the rest of your life in this lab you’ll have to face me.”

Logan is there by Barry’s side and he watches the exchange with a terrified expression on his face and Barry would have laughed if in a different situation: he had always found the fact that Logan, who is a couple of inches taller than Barry and several (several) pounds heavier, is scared of Iris, slightly hilarious. As it is now Barry has no wishes to answer to any questions Logan might have, and he can sense them coming, so as soon as Iris slams the door closed Barry drops his experiment on the sink with a  _fuck it_  and steps outside to finally face the storm.

“What?”, he asks.

“What do you mean what? We do live in the same house, you know, you’ll have to talk to me eventually, so how exactly are you planning on avoiding me for life?”

She’s angry. Angry like Barry has never seen her be before, especially not towards him anyway so it’s a little scary, but he can’t help being a smart ass;

“I mean, it’s not for life, just until it doesn’t hurt anymore, give you a chance to digest whatever it is you’ve eaten today”, and he’s suddenly very proud of that last part.

But looking at her hurts. It hurts so much he can barely breath, so he prays he doesn’t get a panic attack like the ones he used to get as kids, as Iris asks;

“And how long is that gonna take?”

“6 to 8 hours”, he tells her; “the digestion thing, the hurt thing I’m not so sure”, it does feel like it’s gonna last forever, like he won’t ever be happy again, but that’s not what he tells her.

“Probably four years”, he says instead; “maybe five.”

And it’s a lie, and it hurts Iris, he can see in her face and he wants to kick himself for it as she says;

“Great! By then you’ll be out of the house and you’ll successfully avoid me for life.”

And he wants to hug the pain out of her, and he wants to kick himself for causing it, and it’s ridiculous that they are hurting each other when it’s possibly the last thing they want. It’s the last thing he wants anyway, but here they are nonetheless.

Barry forces himself to stay quiet after that. Seems safer this way, but Iris doesn’t interpretes his silence as he means it.

“Great! That’s great! So that’s your solution for being in love with me? Ignoring me completely?”

And luckily there’s no one around as she asks and he can’t believe she actually uttered those words in public.  _At school._

“We’re in public!”, he points out.

“Then you come with me”, Iris demands, grabbing his hand like she’s afraid that if she doesn’t he’s gonna bolt, which he can’t really blame her for since despite of himself  his brain is actually planning the best escaping route.

And it’s a little pathetic how much he enjoys her hand on his: they’ve never actually walked around holding hands, not since they started whatever it is they’ve started, not since it could mean something else, so he finds himself enjoying it, her warmth and the smell of Iris, and god, he’s ruined. He’ll never ever get over her, he’ll never love someone else.

Iris drags him to the secluded corner behind the library building and there’s two giggling freshmen girls kissing there but they leave under Iris’ glare and Barry controls the urge to apologise to them, he stays quiet instead as Iris turns to face him with a familiar slap on his shoulder and a  _you suck!_

“Thanks”, he says, rubbing his shoulder, controlling the sudden and overwhelming need to grab her and kiss her and feel her against him.

“Stop!” Iris shouts, then taking a deep breath she says, in a more controlled tone;

“Stop doing that, Barry, stop acting all cold and detached.”

And he’s not detached, he’s so far from detached, and her eyes, begging him for something, seem to finish him and then he’s crashing his lips into hers, and in his defence he didn’t plan it, he just can’t help it, he needs one last kiss before she breaks things off.

He’s not sure as to what he’s expecting in response but Iris kisses him back with the exact same desperation he is feeling, biting his bottom lip till it hurts good, and there’s a lot of spit being gloriously swapped and Barry pins Iris against the wall, marveling on the fact that she tastes so good, and it really wasn’t just his imagination playing tricks on his memory, and he ponders that maybe that TV show Iris likes so much is right about the saliva compatibility thing, but then she pushes him off of her saying;

“Stop”, calming her breathing down and repeating; “stop, stop, stop”, and Barry is not sure if she’s talking only to him or to herself as well cause he notices her hands rest on his chest even after he has pulled away.

“Sorry”, he says, for good measure, and when Iris doesn’t respond he places one sweet kiss on her bottom lip as he confesses;

“I’ve missed you.”

“Well, I’m not the one avoiding you”, she points out and Barry knows the whole thing is at least partially self-inflicted cause she doesn’t seem to be completely opposed to the kissing they are doing.

Her hands are at the nape of his neck, keeping him close, as his travel down her arms and then up her thighs, finding a little hole on the pair of tights she’s wearing under her skirt and Iris pushes him off again.

This time she steps away from him saying;

“No. No! We have to talk, Barry.”

“There’s no solution”, he tells her simply; “I can’t talk you in love with me and you can’t talk me out of love with you.”

“No!”, she says and he’s not sure if she’s agreeing or disagreeing with him until she concludes; “this is not what this is about, you hurt me, Barry, and that has nothing to do with…  _that_. It has to do with  _this._ ”.

And Barry thinks she means the fighting and not the kissing.

“I’m sorry”, he says. “I’m sorry. I don’t like when we fight either.”

“I wasn’t fighting”, she tells him, and she’s doing the blinking thing she does when she’s trying to stop herself from crying and in moments like this it seems like she loves him, it feels like she loves him and Barry can’t understand how she can be like this and not feel all he’s feeling too.

He takes her hands into his to guarantee her he’s not running away anymore, and this time he tries his best to give not expecting to take anything;

“I love you, Iris, I just — I love you”, he tries to explain, and she looks him into the eyes, sucking him in with hers; “I know it’s not fair to… I just — I can’t understand how you… _don’t_ ”, he says, and he keeps his voice soft, or at least he tries to. He doesn’t want to accuse her again, he’s trying to understand, he wants to understand.

“It’s not like that Barr — I… it hurts too much already.”

“What?”, he shakes his head, surely he heard it wrong.

“It hurts too much already and you’re just my best friend — I don’t mean just like that’s not enough — I just mean, you’re leaving, Barry. You are leaving and I can’t let you be more cause I can’t take it if you are”

And he has no idea what she’s talking about which is a first cause they usually seem to have a good understanding of each other, but now he is completely lost;

“What? Iris — I’m not — why do you think I’m — I’m not leaving. I’m not leaving you.”

“Yes, you are. You are going to a fancy school next year, and I want you to go, I want you to go and be brilliant and — I just, I need control over it, and if I’m in… — then I have none and I can’t take it.”

And she is crying now, and he can’t believe he hadn’t thought of that, it seemed only logical since college seemed to be all seniors could talk and think about these days, and it’s pretty obvious now he thinks about how she had been completely avoiding the subject ever since their first time, and Barry figures that with that he forgot to tell her he had decided to stay, go to CCU with her, so he tells her now;

“I won’t leave, Iris.”

But she seems to think that’s not an active decision, that he’s actually doubting himself, so she assures him;

“You’ll get in, Barry. You’ll obviously get in.”

“It doesn’t matter”, he explains; “I’ve decided I’ll stay here with you.”

“No. No. I won’t let you do that”, she takes her hands back from his hold and pushes him away, like she’s actually pushing him to go to some Ivy League school or something, and she adds; 

“You have to go to the best school and I won’t let you stay, I won’t ruin your future. No!”

“CCU is a good school.”

“It’s not the best.”

And it seems like he won’t be able to convince her otherwise but he doesn’t understand why she seems to think it’s not some crime if she goes there but it is for him to.

“Then you come with me”, he proposes.

“Barry —”

“No, listen”, he asks her, cause he figured a compromise; “we’ll apply to the same schools and —”

“And I won’t get in.”

And Barry has never understood how Iris thinks he’s so much better than her when he’s not, really, he’s just not.

“Maybe you will and I won’t. You get good grades too. And you’ll do better than me in the interview, let’s not pretend like I won’t mumble and ramble.”

She shakes her head and he’s not sure to what part of his statement she’s disagreeing to until she says;

“Don’t say that, of course you’ll get in, and you’ll go. This is about your whole future.”

And Barry is trying desperately to find a way of telling her that  _she_ is his future and that nothing else matter without freaking her out.    

“It’s not like I can’t be a CSI going to CCU”, he argues. 

Cause Iris knows that’s what he wants to do, and even though Joe and his dad seem to think that he could do better, that he could work at a prestigious lab if he wanted to, Iris is the one person who has never questioned him, that seemed to understand exactly why he needed to be a forensic scientist. But she doesn’t seem to understand why he doesn’t have to go to a fancy school now, why he needs to stay.

“You’ll be robbed of all these great opportunities”, she tells him; “I can’t ask that from you, I don’t want to.”

And it doesn’t make any sense how she seems to think  _she_  doesn’t need those great opportunities when he does.

“So CCU is good enough for you but not for me? Why?”

“Because you can do better, and I’m not gonna be the one standing in your way, I don’t want to be the one ruining your future.”

And that’s the whole point, she’s not asking, he is the one deciding that! And then when he realises the words were already out of his mouth;

“Iris, you are my future. The rest is just — I don’t know, background noise.”

“No. Don’t say that, don’t say that”, she cries, and Barry is not sure if it’s because she thinks she’s not a good enough future for him or because she doesn’t want him to be hers, but she buries her face on his chest and hugs him tight so he’s leaning towards the first one, as ridiculous as it sounds.

And suddenly he’s afraid she’ll push him away, that she’ll make it so he wants to leave, and she’s too stubborn and if she decides it, if she thinks that’s the only way she’ll convince him to go, then nothing will ever hurt more than that, so he has to make sure she knows he won’t take that.

“Look, Iris, you don’t have to be in love with me”, he assures her once she pulls away; “you don’t have to — you can either take me or not, I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to, but you can’t make me do anything I don’t want to either, so don’t — don’t break up with me”, and he’s not sure that’s the best term since they haven’t even determined they are together, but it’s the best he can think of; “because if you think that will make me go, it won’t. It won’t.”

“Barr —”, she whines, and he kisses her again, softly and salty from her tears. And it might have some tears of him there too.

“CCU is a good school”, he tells her; “I’ll get many opportunities there, and so will you. I mean, what makes you think that you can’t take if I leave but that I can take leaving?”

She shakes her head again and kisses him forcefully, like she’s trying to tell him something, he’s not sure what, but he says anyway;

“I love you, Iris. I love you now and I’ve loved you when we were kids, before any of it, before I knew what it meant so I’ll love you always, and that’s more important than anything else.”

And there’s a little bit of sun now and it flickers on her hair, making it shine like halo and Barry thinks how appropriate it is as she tries another kiss, a sweet one this time.      

* * *

On second try Iris figures she likes the whole car thing way better. Barry breaths heavily under her and she’s missed him, the smell of him, the taste of him, the soft noises he makes and his sweat-dampened hair and his green eyes darkened until there is almost no green left and his long eyelashes against the dimmed light of the day, and then them fluttering on her cheeks.

The feel of him, his quickened beating heart synchronised to her own, and how whenever they are like this  it doesn’t seem to have space for much else in her. She enjoys that, she concludes as his breathing slows down, matching hers, that fullness, that sense of completeness, like all she lacked he somehow had and vice versa.

Maybe that is what love is, but she has no desire to think about it.

If she stops to think about it when he’s warm and slick under her then she can’t take it all the sudden cause she can feel the weight of forever, and she can feel all the ways she can’t live without him and she doesn’t like to need him so much, cause he thinks he’s not leaving, he thinks he can convince her to let him stay, but he can’t, not even if she has to apply to Harvard for him herself.

Barry kisses her temple, bringing her down from her thoughts, bringing her back to now, to him, and them, and she smiles satisfied for the first time in too long and he smiles back, his pretty face shining with it and she wants to melt into him. 

She brushes his hair instead, and then his eyebrows and then she kisses them, first the left one and then the right, and then the tip of his nose and then his upper lip and then the bottom one and Barry stays immobile under her ministrations and once she’s done with the little kisses he nuzzles into the crook of her neck, placing a little kiss there himself, and tells her;

“I can’t believe we just had sex at school.”

“We’re not at school”, she points out. It’s not like she would have sex with their car parked on the school parking lot. She moved it to the empty no-exit street close by, by Barry’s suggestion, but she doesn’t point  _that_  out, she doesn’t say that the foggy windows are definitively shielding them from peering eyes, doesn’t say they’ll probably walk back to class smelling (and looking) like they just had sex. She’s afraid he’ll regret it, that he’ll say something in return that will break the moment.

“Besides”, she tells him; “we’re fully clothed, no one could have seen a thing.”

“I took your tights off”, he informs her, like she could have missed it somehow.

“We should go back to school”, she says, cause they really should. She has skipped more classes since the fight than she had for the entirety of her academic life.

Barry mutters a  _yeah, we should_  but he doesn’t move and neither does she and it’s too comfortable, he is too comfortable and it’s been too long since she last felt this comfortable, Barry’s forehead against her shoulder, and the smell of his shampoo, so she decides to give herself some few extra minutes.

“Hey”, he calls after they’ve cleaned up with the rest of the kleenex she had on the glove compartment.

“What?”, she asks as he watches her, from the passenger seat while she occupies the driver one, pulling her tights back on. She is trying to formulate a plan regarding where’s the best trash bin to dump the used condoms and all the kleenex before their car would get to permanently smell like sex and she’s not really ready for his question;

“Am I — Are we — Are you my girlfriend now?”

His uncertainty makes her giddy, so she can’t help the little laugh that escapes her at the notion that this boy has all this love for her inside of him, that he’ll probably take her even if she says no, but she has no desire of saying no;

“Yeah”, she tells him instead; “just now.”

And the smile she gets in return would make pretty much anything worth it.

* * *

When Joe steps into home that day he hears a laugh coming from the kitchen: Iris’, joined by Barry’s a second later and it’s a relief to hear them back to their normal selves again.

“Hey, dad”, Iris says when he walks into the mess they’ve made: there’s a whole lot of flour everywhere, including Barry’s hair while Iris stands there, mixing something chocolate-y in a bowl, in pristine condition herself.

“You’ve made up”, he points out to them.

“Yep, yeah, we did”, Barry says proudly which causes a laugh out of Joe as he wonders if his talk had the desired effect or if there was something else.

“Ok, since it’s over can I know what you were fighting about?”

And Iris answers him pretty quickly, before Barry even has time to breath;

“College applications.”

And it sounds like a lie, or at the very least not the whole truth, but they are laughing, and baking, which means they are eating, and that’s pretty much all he can bring himself to care about at the moment.

“And that’s all solved now?”, he questions them and Barry nods vigorously as Iris says;

“Well, he thinks it is.”

About a week later Joe finds that the college thing hold a bit of truth since Barry informs him he’ll be attending CCU with Iris, _if he gets in_ , like he wouldn’t.

“What happened to those Ivy League schools you had in mind?”, he asks. 

It’s difficult to determine where is the point in which parenting Barry is too much parenting, is stepping boundries he isn’t supposed to cross. 

That is the sort of thing he can discuss with his dad. Besides he’ll be 18 and with access to most of his parent’s money by the time he goes off to college, but Joe still feels responsible, even if legally he won’t be anymore, he needs to make sure the kid is not making some huge mistake that will ruin his life since it falls on the pattern Barry has already presented of selling himself short.

“I guess I’ll apply, cause Iris won’t let me not to”, so it’s definitively his decision, and apparently Iris is against it. 

“But I don’t want to move away”, he continues; “and I don’t need to go to an Ivy League to be a forensic scientist.”

“Barry —”

“Look, Joe, I know that you think that is, I don’t know, beneath me or something, but that’s what I wanna be, I’ve decided that a long time ago.”

“Ok”, Joe says; “just promise me something, you’ll discuss your career choice and your school choice with your dad next time you visit.”

“Fine”, he tells him, looking him in the eyes, so if Barry chose that particular Saturday morning to be honest, and Iris happened to be boxing, then it wasn’t like Joe to waste a perfectly good opportunity.

“Ok”, he tells him, and then; “and the fight you and Iris had —”

“Iris thinks I’m staying because of her”, and sometimes Barry is so easy.

“Are you?”, Joe asks.

“Yeah, I mean, not just her, but you and Iris and my dad are all the family I’ve got left, I don’t wanna leave.”

So, not where Joe was expecting Barry’s answer to go. 

Barry had a lot of excitable energy in himself, he had an easy laugh, he was open and more often than not seemed happy and content, even through the terrible teenage years, so it was almost too easy to forget all of his tragedies, to forget the scared boy he brought home, to forget that it made sense for him to be attached and to not want to leave, to not want to risk losing what he had left.

“You do know that we’re still your family, Barr, even if you do leave.”

“I know.”

“Ok.”

“Ok, can I get back to my videogame now?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.”

It’ll be weeks later, when one Friday night he comes back home pretty late to find the pair of them sleeping on the extra matress Joe keeps in the downstairs’ closet that he will actually get his answer. They had dragged the mattress to the middle of the living room for a messy movie-marathon (how many blankets and cushions can two persons actually need? And what’s with the relocation of the living room furniture for beyond the necessary?), like they used to when Barry had just moved in. He had trouble sleeping back then and Iris found a way that he would be able to sleep without making Barry embarrassed about needing her there for it.

It’s a weird sight with the two of them all grown up now. Iris curled up against Barry. There something definitely uncomfortable in the scene, like he was suddenly invading a private moment. So Joe calls his daughter, and after third try Iris opens her eyes slightly to tell him;

“I’ve left your plate on the fridge, you only have to heat it up.”

“Go to bed, Iris”, he says and but that only causes her to move closer to Barry, burying herself into him, giving Joe an unconvincing;

“Yeah, ok, five minutes” in response, and as she says nothing else Joe finally just simply asks;

“Are you and Barry dating?”

Iris opens her eyes fully to face him now. She nods her head in a silent answer and Joe decides that whatever he has to do about that can wait for another day so he instructs her;

“Ok. Go back to sleep.”

**Author's Note:**

> written to answer to a request at my tumblr iriswestthings


End file.
